Tower of Babel

by Michael Sears

  “A business dinner with clients,” she began without explanation or context. “One of whom is a member of the Reisner family. You’ve heard of them.”

  Ted understood right away. Their last conversation. He had told Jill to ask Jackie where she had been the night before. “She didn’t mention any of the other players?”

  “Should she have?”

  “There was a city councilman and a banker for the Russian mob.”

  “I would be in no way surprised that my wife meets with politicians. She was in Albany last week. The firm is giving her new opportunities.”

  “I repeat—Russian mob.”

  “You called this person a banker. She met with a politician, a banker, and a real estate developer. That’s her job. Once upon a time, you would have been at that table.”

  Ted couldn’t deny it. “She passed a bribe to the councilman’s assistant.” He’d never been asked to do anything like that. He wanted to think he would have refused.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “It was a campaign contribution.”

  “You’re saying it was legit?”

  A pair of pigeons landed on the window ledge and began cooing at each other in full throat.

  “Oh, God,” Jill said, stomping to the window and banging on it with her fist. “Get a room, you two.” She turned to Ted. “They make me nuts.”

  The birds separated and marched to opposite ends of the ledge, muttering unhappily.

  “‘The course of true love never did run smooth,’” Ted said. “Dick Powell.”

  “William Shakespeare,” she snapped.

  “Him too.”

  The cooing started up again. While Jill had her back to the window, the two feathered lovers had returned to stage center.

  “Shit!” Jill unlocked the casement window and tried to turn the ancient crank. The handle didn’t move. “Here. You do it.” She stepped away and stared at Ted until he rose.

  “Okay, but this doesn’t count toward my fifteen minutes.”

  The windows had been installed long before Jill had taken up residence. The mechanism froze up regularly and had to be coaxed into operation. Ted tried the crank. It didn’t move. The bigger pigeon—easily identified as the male by his self-adulating poses—strutted the length of the ledge. The female stared at Ted.

  “It’s going to need some . . . lubrication,” Ted said.

  Jill didn’t respond.

  “Really,” he said. “Is there any 3-in-One in the house?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “How about cooking oil?”

  “Olive oil?” she asked, turning and heading for the kitchen.

  The male bird tried to mount the female, but with a twitch and a shuffle step right, she unseated him, never taking her eyes off Ted.

  “What would you do if I wasn’t here?” Ted called to her.

  “Wait for Jacqueline to come home!” she yelled.

  He waited until she returned with the olive oil. “I think she’s in trouble, Jill. Serious trouble. Jail-time trouble.”

  “Not possible.” She handed him two paper towels with the bottle of oil.

  “No? Because she’s too honest? She’s ambitious.”

  “That’s not a crime.”

  Ted concentrated on the window while he considered his next words. He let a few drops of the oil ooze out onto the mechanism. They promptly ran off the sides and splattered on the sill. He mopped them up with a paper towel and tried again. The female pigeon was engrossed in his project. The male bobbed and cooed, more exaggerated in movement and volume.

  Opening remarks. Frame the story for the jury. Lessons learned and never forgotten. He took a deep breath and began.

  “Jacqueline Clavette scammed a woman named Barbara Miller out of her property.”

  “Isn’t that what you do?” Jill said. “Scam people out of what’s rightfully owed them?”

  “The difference is that when someone does a deal with me, they know the split up front, and they can take it or leave it. Your wife robbed an old lady. She was aided in this by one or more judges. She did this so that Ron Reisner and his corporation, LBC, could purchase those lots and build a one-hundred-story mixed-use tower. Reisner wanted those properties so badly that he was willing to overpay by more than one million dollars. Miller wouldn’t sell at any price. Are you getting all this?”

  He tried turning the handle. With a reluctant groan, it moved a quarter of an inch. The birds flew off. Progress.

  “Ms. Clavette served LBC’s interests in other ways. She helped carry cash to politicians. LBC needed approvals, exemptions, and variances to allow the construction of a high-rise of that size, commanding so much airspace. Local, municipal, and state-level elected officials were involved. All of them needed to be greased. I would guess that when she went to Albany last week, she took an extra suitcase.” He looked over his shoulder at Jill. She was listening, but she wasn’t giving anything away.

  “Conspiracy, fraud, and bribery,” he continued. “In the end the crime of conspiracy may be the most egregious. Because with something this big, with so much money being thrown at it, there is going to be some poor hungry soul who sees an opportunity to scoop up a bit of loose cash. Someone basically dishonest but mostly harmless. Someone like Richard Rubiano.”

  If Jill had ever heard the name before, she covered it well. She didn’t blink. He turned back to the window and tried the crank again.

  “And the big players can’t have that. You let one lonely loser get away with that kind of action, and the whole house of cards could come down. They had to shut him up. Permanently. Oh, and did I mention? The Russian mob is involved.”

  The handle turned and the window opened.

  “I’m talking about murder,” he said.

  Jill didn’t respond.

  Ted closed the window, leaving a bit of play in the handle. “There you go. It’ll be easier next time.”

  Jill’s face was a blank, but he could see something was going on behind her eyes. Maybe he was finally getting to her. Getting her to listen.

  “I don’t think your Jacqueline has any idea about people getting murdered—or roughed up or run down by cars. It’s not her style. She tells herself—and maybe you—that she’s facilitating campaign contributions. Pay for play. Small change. Nobody cares. And the old lady? She’s safer in the home. If she lives to be a hundred and ten, she can’t spend all she’s got. Jackie did her a favor.”

  “You should go now,” Jill said, speaking in a near whisper.

  Ted checked his watch. “Almost. I’ve got two minutes to go. I can’t make this stop, Jill. It’s way too late. The police are circling, and when they move, everyone involved will go down as accessory to murder and kidnapping. The fraud, bribery, and white-collar crimes will be gravy. If Jackie talks to me, I will do what I can for her. Not because I care what happens to Ms. Clavette but because I care a lot about what happens to you.”

  “You stupid, arrogant prick,” she began quietly, almost conversationally. “You are talking about the woman I love, and you calmly call her a murderer and think I’m going to take your side. To get the firm to hire you again? Is that it? Get out.”

  “I came here to help you.”

  “Get out.”

  “There’s a paper trail.” Less than a minute left but he bet that Osvaldo would wait a few minutes before calling, and the police response would take another five minutes or so. He kept going. “There are witnesses. The cops are going to find Barbara Miller, and then it will be all over for Jackie.”

  “Leave. Now.”

  “The million in surplus money? Was that her little nest egg? A little something that she put aside for the two of you? Payment for all the dirt she had to wade through?”

  “She earned every goddamn penny.”

  An admission.

&n
bsp; And a revelation. “You’ve known all along, haven’t you?” He didn’t wait for her denial. “Hate me if you have to, but please tell her to go to the cops. It’s her only chance at this point.”

  “You are all so stupid,” Jill said.

  “I see it. The firm was never going to give Jacqueline Clavette a shot, no matter who she was married to—so she took it. She made it happen.” Another thought hit him. “And she kept records. Every meeting. Didn’t she? She was ready to take them all down if they tried to ditch her. Your father, Reisner, that fat Russian, the damn governor, if she had to. She was smarter than all of them.”

  Or so she thought. “Oh, shit.” Ted was nearly struck dumb. “Do they know?”

  “The police will be on their way,” she said.

  “She can’t let them know, Jill. They’ll kill her if they figure it out.”

  She moved past him and opened the door.

  He stopped in the doorway. “Tell her. They’ve killed once. They’ve tried to kill a second time.”

  She swung the door hard, forcing him to step back. He heard the lock click into place.

  -61-

  Ted hit the button for the basement and begged the cosmos for a tiny bit of luck. The cosmos came through. The elevator continued past the first floor without stopping.

  Jill possessed a tribal loyalty that came with a specified set of ethics. Family was all. Jackie was included in this pact—as long as she was no threat to the inner circle. He should have expected Jill to respond exactly as she had.

  As he stepped off the elevator, tubes of fluorescent lights automatically sputtered to life as he stepped out into the laundry room. A single red bulb over a door on the far side of the room marked the exit to the back alley. He hit the push bar, and the metal door flew open, accompanied by a buzzing noise. A muted alarm, loud enough to notify the staff but discreet enough that no tenant would be disturbed.

  He was in back of the building, facing the basement door of the adjoining building. Empty trash cans lined both sides of the alley. To his left was a tall fence, topped with razor wire. To his right, a concrete ramp led up to a metal gate and the side street. He ran.

  The gate, of course, was locked, and it fit too well in its frame for him to squeeze over or under. He was trapped.

  He rejected the thought of hiding in a garbage can. The odds of getting away with it were infinitesimal, and the thought of being found there was unbearable. He walked to the door and waited for the forces of law and order.

  A moment later the metal door banged open again, and Osvaldo showed his head. “You there, Mr. Molloy?” He let the door swing to behind him. “I had to call. Sorry about that.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I sent them up to Miss Fitzmaurice’s apartment. Come with me. I’ll let you out.” He took a nest of keys from his belt and led Ted to the gate. “On your way, sir.”

  Ted thanked him. “And best of luck to your son.” He fought the urge to run and instead walked confidently out onto the street with the air of one who belonged on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Not one but two police cruisers stood in front of the entrance to Jill’s building. Ted walked in the other direction, expecting an authoritative voice to hail him at any second. A familiar car sat idling at the curb, partially blocking a fire hydrant.

  “Hey, boss,” Mohammed said. “We go back to Queens now?”

  -62-

  Mrs. Zielinski played Scrabble like a gladiator. There could be only one winner, and that player could be crowned only when everyone else was dead. Ted was down to six unusable tiles when she placed an X in front of an unguarded I and announced that this was a letter in the Greek alphabet. Ted challenged. She told him that it was also the proper title for the fourteenth star in a given constellation. Ted accepted defeat with as much grace as his demolished ego allowed, proud of his sole double-score word—“MALARKEY,” which had linked the M in her “EMPATHY” with the “KEY” he had inserted on his previous turn. When it was over, her score was in the mid six hundreds, while his had barely made it out of double digits.

  He checked his watch. Ten till midnight. The nurses were preparing for the shift change. He’d been there since eight, Kenzie’s mother since four. Her father was returning at 4 a.m., and Lester was due at noon. In staggered shifts, they had her covered twenty-four hours a day.

  “Not enough time for a rematch,” Ted said.

  She laughed, quite pleased with her win. “Not that you want one.”

  “No,” he admitted. “I can handle losing, but it’s more difficult when the final result is obvious so early in the game.”

  She slid the tiles into the case. “Will you be all right?” She was not referring to his bruised ego.

  “Me? You have my word. And I will call if there’s any change. You two need some rest.”

  Kenzie was no longer sedated, but the doctors wanted her to awaken on her own. The swelling was down, the emergency over. Now it was a matter of waiting. And hoping.

  “Do you have something to read?” Mrs. Zielinski asked. “Can I get you anything before I go?”

  Ted had to smile. Being mothered was an unusual sensation and not unpleasant. “I’m fine. There’s a Law & Order marathon that goes until six a.m., and there’s coffee at the nurses’ station.” And a security guard on the floor all night, he thought.

  Giving him one last brave smile, Mrs. Z gathered her things and left Ted alone with her daughter.

  Kenzie was breathing on her own, and most of the monitors had been removed. The blood pressure machine made sounds periodically as the armband inflated. Greevey and Logan investigated a Wall Street banker. Ted watched until the alert on Kenzie’s saline drip went off. The bag was empty. A moment later a serious-faced nurse bustled in and changed it.

  “She’s doing fine. You might want to order her breakfast,” she said, placing a menu on the bed table. “She’ll be hungry.”

  Prediction or prognosis? Either way he was encouraged.

  Ted looked at the menu. Pancakes or scrambled eggs. Powdered, institutionalized, and barely qualifying as food. Maybe he’d run out and get her a bagel.

  The nurse stopped at the door and whispered to him, “Get her the pancakes. The eggs are awful.”

  Ben Stone gave a devastating summation to the jury, which left Ted wondering once again at Michael Moriarty’s ability to pack passion into such a laid-back delivery. The screen jumped to an ad for senior scooters. He hit the mute button and went out for a coffee. He knew what the jury was going to do.

  The pot held a half inch of black goo. Ted went through the cabinets and found a box of filters, but the can of Bustelo in the dorm-sized refrigerator contained nothing but a light coating of dark brown dust. He left it open on the counter and walked down to the snack and beverage machines.

  Salt or sugar. Pick your poison. He surrendered two dollars and was rewarded with a twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and two quarters. The Fig Newtons whispered his name, but he put his money away and took a walk along the corridor to stretch out the kinks in his back. He wasn’t tired and didn’t need the caffeine—yet. The soda bottle slid into his jacket pocket for later.

  The double door at the end of the hall was operated by an electronic release. Anyone who wanted to enter had to either swipe a pass or be buzzed in by a nurse, who could monitor the situation via closed-circuit television. As an added precaution, and at the Zielinskis’ request, a guard was on duty, sitting on a folding chair inside the door. Only he wasn’t.

  Ted walked quickly to the station. “Excuse me.” He didn’t wait for any of the people on duty to take notice. “The guard is not there. Does anyone know what’s going on?”

  The women all ignored him. A male nurse looked up. “All security personnel were called down to the ER to handle a situation. He’ll be back as soon as things downstairs are under control.”

  Ted was
not reassured. “What kind of situation?”

  The nurse shook his head and continued typing. He didn’t know, didn’t care, or didn’t care to be questioned about it—or all three. Ted didn’t like it. Anything out of the ordinary would have put him on the alert. A missing security guard was a screaming siren with blue and red strobe lights.

  “Can you let me know if anyone tries to come in while the guard is gone?”

  That got the attention of one woman. Her eyebrows met in the universal expression for What are you talking about?

  “I know I sound paranoid, but I’d feel better if you went along with me on this,” Ted said.

  “Not a problem.” She smiled once in dismissal and returned to her work.

  Ted stood in the corridor watching the doors long enough to feel a bit pathetic. He was being paranoid. The only other visitor on the floor was the mother of a young man who’d been in an auto accident. She was asleep, despite the purposely designed discomfort of the easy chair in which she was sprawled. There was the right idea. Ted needed to relax. The guard might be missing, but the perimeter is safe. Time to chill. He returned to Kenzie’s room.

  A cleaning cart was blocking the entry, keeping the room’s sliding glass door from automatically closing. The soothing twilight of the room instantly became dark and menacing. Ted pushed the cart away and stopped in midstride.

  The man had his back to Ted and was wearing the one-piece dark green overalls that Ted had seen on all the cleaning staff. But the rest of the picture made no sense. Ted registered that the man was broad shouldered and tall and moved like a predator. And he was doing something with the saline bag hanging over Kenzie’s bed.